College food gets 3rd degree

When I was in college, “real food” consisted of processed cheeseburgers with fries. And the closest we came to food activism was a petition requesting frozen yogurt machines in the cafeteria.

Today, many college students would deign to consume such swill only if it was criteria for extra credit in a class on, say, Outdated Eating Patterns of the Proletariat. Today, it’s trendy for young people to actually care about the food they put in their bodies, along with where it comes from, how it’s grown and whether or not it’s “fair,” a word formerly consigned to the playground rather than the dinner plate.

So it should surprise no one that the college on the vanguard of the “real food” movement is none other than Clark University, that progressive, politically-correct institution of higher learning and better eating.

Clark recently became the first college in Massachusetts to commit to “real food” purchasing, and if you don’t understand the term, you are obviously a cretin who considers Cheez Doodles the third level on the food pyramid. According to extensive research I just now conducted on Google, “real food” is defined as locally grown, fair trade, of low environmental impact and humanely produced.

“We have a really good dining services program,” said Clark sophomore Amanda Brackett, 19. “But the students just want better. If we can demand locally grown and sustainable food, we can change the purchasing patterns of the entire food production system.”

That’s a heady goal, and a sure departure from the days when college students tried to change food purchasing patterns by using twisted coat hangers to disengage the Skittles bags from the vending machines in the Westfield State dorms. Or so I’ve heard. These days, students are demanding the fresh fish and healthy vegetables that their elders fled to college to avoid, a clear sign that our youth, on the whole, are a few fries short of a Happy Meal and determined to upend the natural order.

But they’re certainly earnest. Amanda is a member of the college’s Food Truth, the student food sustainability club, which recently convinced President David Angel to sign a pledge that the university will have 20 percent “real food” by 2020. The commitment is part of a national campaign coordinated by the Real Food Challenge, which began as a program of the Boston-based The Food Project Inc., and is now affiliated with Third Sector of New England, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Frito-Lay Corp.

Kidding about the last part; just wanted to make sure you were paying attention. In any case, the Food Truth group has been meeting with the manager of dining services at Clark to review invoices and analyze purchasing data. Amanda said that, while many of the students are “really excited” about the real food movement, not everyone is on board.

“There’s a portion of the population, like the psychology majors and stuff, they’re just interested in food that tastes better,” she said.

Keep in mind that the dining hall at Clark already resembles a luxury cruise line buffet and includes salad bars, a vegan station, a chef’s signature station, an international sauté station, a grill, a deli, homemade soups, a pasta station, a gluten-free station and a pizza chef who does nothing but make speciality brick oven pizzas with crusts he braids by hand.

“The options the students have are incredible,” said Heather Vaillette, manager of Clark Dining Services, operated by Sodexo. “We make all of our food from scratch. But college students want to think outside the box. They like to push the envelope.”